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Participant
January 12, 2017
Question

Mobile friendly feature to read PDF's on your browser

  • January 12, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 1931 views

Dear community, is there a mobile friendly feature on Acrobat Pro (or other) to read PDF's on your browser? Thank you

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1 reply

Legend
January 13, 2017

Hmmm, not sure about reading in Browsers.  It firstly depends on what PDF reader is being used within the browser.  If the Acrobat Reader plug-in is installed in the browser a reflow option for content doesn't seem to be supported either (I had a quick look in Firefox only, if it works in other browsers I'm hoping other people viewing this post will correct me if I'm wrong -- other wise dear Adobe it would be a great accessibility feature to add to the browser plug-in in a future release ;-) ).

However, there is a workaround, that can make it work, as long as people download and open the PDF in the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.  This reader is available for Desktop and Mobile devices. (e.g. through App Store, Google Play, or for desktop https://get.adobe.com/reader/)

  • You'll need to ensure that you create Tagged PDFs. These PDFs -- when tagged and structured properly -- will have a reflow option available in Acrobat Reader for desktop, tablets and mobile devices.

When you open a tagged PDF in the desktop version of Acrobat Reader:

  • Choose View > Zoom > Reflow.
  • When the reader then zooms in or out (by clicking the + or - icons in the toolbar at the top of the screen), the text size will appear larger and text will reflow within the width of the document window.

When you open a tagged PDF in the mobile version of Acrobat Reader:

  • Tap on the lower left icon (looks like two pages joining).
  • Then tap on Reading Mode.
  • When the reader uses a pinch and zoom gesture, the text will appear larger and reflow within the width of the device display size.

In other words in both cases (Desktop and Mobile)  the content of the PDF will reflow and show the content in linear order, and no longer show it as it was displayed originally (e.g. the designed layout view).